Digressions&Impressions

On Hazony and Bourke on Burke and Frank S. Meyer, and the risks of Freedom

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Lodged inside Yoram Hazony's Conservatism: A Rediscovery is also a polemic against what came to be known as 'fusionism.' (Recall my series of posts on Hazony's book recall the first one here; here the second; here the third one; and the fourth.) I quote Hazony: "This alignment of liberals and conservatives was assembled, first and foremost, by William F. Buckley Jr., the young founder and editor of the conservative weekly, National Review. But its principal theoretician was his close associate, Frank Meyer, who was credited with having devised a “fusion” of liberalism and conservatism appropriate to conditions in America during the Cold War. That this “fusionism” was politically successful cannot be denied...Meyer’s fusion was also a version of Enlightenment liberalism." Chapter VI (section 5)

In fact, when Hazony turns to Meyer's (1962) in Defense of Freedom, Hazony is scathing: "Meyer’s book is devoted to repeated attacks on Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, and other defenders of the Anglo-American conservative tradition. Among other things, Meyer accuses Burke of having inspired a standpoint characterized by “an organic view of society, by a subordination of the individual person to society, and therefore, by a denial that the freedom of the person is the decisive criterion of a good polity.”"

Intrigued by Hazony's characterization of Meyer (how could the architect of fusionism, which I think a historic mistake, be an Enlightenment liberal?), I decided to read Meyer (1909 – 1972). Vefore I get to what I want to say about Meyer today, I should note that Hazony subtly misrepresents Meyer here. Meyer is not a critic of Burke the conservative. He is, however, a critic of Kirk and other so-called 'new Conservatives' who have conflated Burke "the practical statesman," whose pronouncements were (to use Huntington's taxonomy [recall yesterday's post]) situational not a political philosophy, with an oracular prophet of a movement. According to Meyer, Burke could take for granted the worth of the (1688) constitution he defended.* That is, Meyer actually admires Burke. (This is not to deny that Meyer also disagrees with some of the late Burke's pronouncements on reason, but he tends to agree with Burke's underlying commitments on liberty.)

Meyer thinks that certain pronouncements of Burke, when treated as an eternal philosophy, lend themselves toward an organicist conception of society and a dangerous form of status quo bias, that what is, is right. As Hazony discerns (and Meyer acknowledges in a note) this is de facto a version of Strauss' criticism of the Burke Strauss found popular among American conservatives.

As an aside, if I am right about this then Richard Bourke’s characterization of recent conservatism (recall yesterday’s post) is misleading. For, our contemporary historical interest in twentieth century conservatism is due in large part to its political success in its ‘fusionist guise’ Stateside. (There is no interest in Kirk today other than as the partial trigger of fusionism.) By design, then, fusionism also rejects the very ‘Burke myth’ Bourke diagnoses from the start. How this could be so forgotten is, in fact, a very interesting question; but about that some other time.

Okay, with that as set up, let me turn, in conclusion, to the main point of today's digression. Meyer thinks reason is, then, required both as a grounds of criticism of any status quo and in the articulation of the means by which the proper end of society, virtue, must be pursued. (Meyer is in contemporary parlance, a certain kind of indirect liberal perfectionist.) In fact, he puts the point in the following way in a passage from 1964 that I find especially congenial: 

In the political and economic realm, however, these truths establish only the foundation for an understanding of the end of civil society and the function of the state. That end, to guarantee freedom, so that men may uncoercedly pursue virtue, can be achieved in different circumstances by different means. To the clarification of what these means are in specific circumstances, the conservative must apply his reason. The technological circumstances of the twentieth century demand above all the breaking up of power and the separation of centers of power within the economy itself, within the state itself, and between the state and the economy. Power of a magnitude never before dreamed of by men has been brought into being. While separation of power has always been essential to a good society, if those who possess it are to be preserved from corruption and those who do not are to be safeguarded from coercion, this has become a fateful necessity under the conditions of modern technology.--"Freedom, Tradition, Conservatism," Reprinted from What is Conservatism? (1964), p. 14 in Libertyfund edition of In Defense of Freedom and Related Essays. [Emphasis added.]

That is, we can describe Meyer's core insight that the pursuit of individual virtue requires negative freedom. But that effective negative freedom, or the freedom of choice worth having, also requires certain social conditions. And in particular, Meyer advocates the (legal) destruction of (to use Sam Bagg's felicitous phrase) concentrated powers (which prevent and curtail formal freedoms in all kinds of ways). Meyer here echoes what I take to be one of the true insights of ordo-liberalism of a generation before. (The ORDOs are more realistic, however, about how much state capacity this presupposes.)

Meyer repeatedly emphasizes that his own position requires fallible contextual judgment. Meyer recognizes that allying with conservatism often entails, I quote from the same page, being "associated with authoritarianism." In context, there is, in fact, a real difference between opposing the state's leviathan to defend the "principle of federalism that reserves to the states or to the people all power not confided to the national authority" before the break up of Jim Crow or after; to worry about sociological scientism in Brown vs Board of Education while agreeing with its verdict in the particular case (or to use such scientism to reject the verdict), etc. 

The previous paragraph is not written by a moralist. If one agrees with Meyer's framework it is worth recognizing that opposing concentrated power in the name of making the pursuit of private virtue as free and responsible agents possible is not sufficient by itself to guard against rather significant errors of moral and political judgment. For, one must also make reasoned, and fallible, judgments about the order in which these powers are tackled and by way of coalitions with those whose ends one only partially shares. What makes Meyer's philosophy especially notable, even tragic, is that his is a most articulate sensitivity toward the risk of such grave error as a feature of freedom, that is, ineliminable from the human condition.

• This first appeared at: <On Hazony and Bourke on Burke and Frank S. Meyer, and the risks of Freedom (substack.com)> a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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See pp. 61-62 and p. 10 of the Libertyfund edition of In Defense of Freedom and Related Essays.  (P. 10 is a reference to Meyer's 1955 essay, Collectivism Rebaptized."

On Russell's History of Western Philosophy (I); Russell on responsible Speech and his Criticism of Pragmatism

MANY histories of philosophy exist, and it has not been my purpose merely to add one to their number. My purpose is to exhibit philosophy as an integral part of social and political life: not as the isolated speculations of remarkable individuals, but as both an effect and a cause of the character of the various communities in which different systems flourished. This purpose demands more account of general history than is usually given by historians of philosophy. I have found this particularly necessary as regards periods with which the general reader cannot be assumed to be familiar. The great age of the scholastic philosophy was an outcome of the reforms of the eleventh century, and these, in turn, were a reaction against previous corruption. Without some knowledge of the centuries between the fall of Rome and the rise of the medieval Papacy, the intellectual atmosphere of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries can hardly be understood. In dealing with this period, as with others, I have aimed at giving only so much general history as I thought necessary for the sympathetic comprehension of philosophers in relation to the times that formed them and the times that they helped to form.

One consequence of this point of view is that the importance which it gives to a philosopher is often not that which he deserves on account of his philosophic merit. For my part, for example, I consider Spinoza a greater philosopher than Locke, but he was far less influential; I have therefore treated him much more briefly than Locke. Some men--for example, Rousseau and Byron-though not philosophers at all in the academic sense, have so profoundly affected the prevailing philosophic temper that the development of philosophy cannot be understood if they are ignored. Even pure men of action are sometimes of great importance in this respect; very few philosophers have influenced philosophy as much as Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, or Napoleon. Lycurgus, if only be had existed, would have been a still more notable example.--Bertrand Russell (1945) The History of Western Philosophy. "Preface"

This is the first of a series of posts on Russell's The History of Western Philosophy (hereafter History), including one, shortly, on why it focuses on "Western Philosophy." The passage quoted above are the first few lines of the History. The first thing to note is the somewhat surprising nod to Verstehen. Russell proposes to offer a contextual philosophy, in which the aim is sympathetic comprehension of philosophers in context. (There are echoes of Collinwood here. Collingwood's The Idea of History was published in 1946, but Russell could have known of Collingwood's lectures in the 1930s.) It is surprising because (recall) Russell's criticism of Bergson are connected to Russell's suspicion of reliance on sympathy. Russell even embraces the stance of "unsympathetic spectatorship!"

Now, the point is not just sympathetic comprehension of philosophers as shaped by their times. The real point of the book, which is explained more fully in the second paragraph, is to offer an account of how philosophy has shaped history. So, right from the start Russell offers a distinction between two sources of evaluation of philosophy:

• (i) an intrinsic one that studies a philosopher/philosophy on its merits;
• (ii) an extrinsic one that is consequentialist in character and studies philosophy on its effects on (a) philosophy and (b) its (social and political) environment. 

Russell does not explain what he means by "merit." (Something But it is clear that this is in some sense connected to the why philosophy is practiced in the "academic sense." So, peculiarly, intrinsic merit is given a sociological understanding. I put it like that not because I think this is what Russell intends, but rather because he accepts that under a certain guise or certain normative understanding of philosophy, Rousseau and Burke, are not philosophers at all because they can't be classified as academic philosophers in any sense. By this he does not mean they lacked academic appointments because Spinoza -- who has very high intrinsic value -- also was not an academic (nor was Locke). But rather that they exhibit, I suspect, the kind of virtues associated with academic philosophy in some sense.

What those virtues are I leave aside now, because Russell is working with a distinction between (say) men of letters and proper philosophers while simultaneously deliberately blurring it because he is going to treat men of letters as key to the history in the History. As he puts in the "introduction" (xiv) the topic of the book is the tracing of "a reciprocal causation: the circumstances of men's lives do much to determine their philosophy, but, conversely, their philosophy does much to determine their circumstances."

That still leaves open what Russell means by 'philosophy' and the intrinsic sense of merit  as well as how he establishes the causal interaction among ideas and circumstances. I wish to return to that in this series. But here I want to focus on the fact that the consequentialist evaluation is not merely neutral. Russell is as interested in the positive and the negative consequences of doctrine. In particular, and this is the theme for today's post, Russell embraces a doctrine of what I have called responsible speech. That it is legitimate to evaluate philosophers in terms of how they will foreseeable shape the environment or even have (surprisingly and unintentionally) shaped the circumstances. To show this I go to the closing set piece of the whole book.* While summing up his criticism of the pragmatist conception of truth, Russell writes,

In all this I feel a grave danger, the danger of what might be called cosmic impiety. The concept of "truth" as something dependent upon facts largely outside human control has been one of the ways in which philosophy hitherto has inculcated the necessary element of humility. When this check upon pride is removed, a further step is taken on the road towards a certain kind of madness--the intoxication of power which invaded philosophy with Fichte, and to which modern men, whether philosophers or not, are prone. I am persuaded that this intoxication is the greatest danger of our time, and that any philosophy which, however unintentionally, contributes to it is increasing the danger of vast social disaster.

The submission to facts is characteristic of Russell's conception of scientific philosophy. It is connected to his criticism of Bergson and his rejection of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR), which has low tolerance for arbitrary facts {[recall my discussion with Jeff Bell}.  Notice that (to echo Tarski) the classical conception of truth that Russell accepts itself is defended in consequentialist terms: it produces the right sort of humility, even sanity. That is to say, Russell thinks we can evaluate a regime of truth in terms of its social consequences on the effects of individuals (pride, humility, intoxication, madness, etc.) and society (social disaster, social peace, etc.) 

And when Russell evaluates the classical regime of truth alongside the possible pragmatist regime of truth,** he rejects the pragmatist on consequentialist grounds. And while such evaluation may not be fair or thought lacking in merit, a pragmatist is in no position to object since she embraces the consequentialist method of evaluation is a feature not a bug of her system. For the pragmatist conception of truth is "instrumentalist" because truth is going to be the product of inquiry. In particular, it will be the thing to be agreed upon "ultimately" by "all those who investigate." This idea has had an important afterlife in the Kuhnian focus on consensus in science. But what matters here that the grounds on which all those who investigate cannot itself be truth (that would be circular as Russell notes), but rather, is, in part, informed by the purposes, including practical ones, of investigation.  It's this feature that makes the instrumentalist conception of truth consequentialist. So, Russell's criticism of Dewey/pragmatist is ad hominem, it is not itself unfair. (To say that is not to say it goes through.)

Russell is careful to say that his rejection of the pragmatist regime of truth on consequentialist grounds is, in part, a judgment about circumstance.  Throughout the book,he lets the reader know he is writing at a particular time, namely one that has been shaped by ideas that lead to intoxication and vast social disaster. In such an environment a pragmatist embrace of truth slides us further down the slippery slope. Pragmatism enhances the road to serfdom. To be sure, Russell could well allow that pragmatist conception of truth is worth pursuing in other contexts. Not all contexts, because -- and I will return to this -- Russell insists that in modernity (the "industrial state") fascism is one of the permanent live possibilities (785; note again the soft historicism of Russell).+ So, while he is writing this at a time, the criticism of pragmatism is indexed to a particular kind of epoch.

Let me close, I don't write this to endorse Russell's criticism of pragmatism. Rather, it is notable how important the consequentialist criticism is. Russell is basically claiming that pragmatism is an irresponsible philosophical doctrine when the state is capable of totalitarian powers and itself the object of a romantic (and worse) attachments. In Russell then we see a treatment of inductive risk in earnest: Russell invites us to consider how our philosophical practice can abused.

 

 

Patrick Deneen and The Noble Lie

During one of the more infamous moments in Plato’s Republic, Socrates suggests that the ideal city needs a founding myth—what he calls “a noble lie”—to ensure its success. The myth has two parts. The first relates that every person in the city comes from the same mother, and thus encourages belief in a common origin and kinship of all the citizens who live in the city. The second relates that every person belongs by birth to a particular class based upon his or her talents and abilities, indicated by a metal gilded upon each soul at birth: gold for the ruling class; silver for ministers, soldiers, and high-ranking servants; bronze and iron for the workers.

Socrates argues that both parts of the myth must be believed by all citizens for the city to succeed. The myth at once seeks to unite and to differentiate, to explain what is common and distinct, to foster civic patriotism amid significant difference. The first part encourages civic commitment, shared sacrifice, and belief in a common good. The second justifies the existence of inequality as a permanent feature of ­human society....If anyone is likely to accept the myth, he suggests, it is the uneducated working class.

...

Unlike Marx, [Plato] did not believe that the members of the lower class would be unlikely to know their own interests. The underclass is likely to accept the myth because they realize it works to their advantage. Its members are keenly aware of the fact of inequality. That part of the “lie” hardly seems false to them. What is novel, and what works to their advantage, is the idea that inequalities exist for the benefit of the underclass as well as the rulers. That is, members with noble metals in their souls are to undertake their work for the benefit of everyone, including those whose souls are marked by base metals. By contrast, members of the ruling class are likely to disbelieve the myth out of self-interest. They balk at the claim that every person, regardless of rank, belongs to the same family. They do not want the advantages that might solely benefit their class to be employed for the benefit of the whole.

Only if each group accepts each part of the “lie,” as Socrates explains, is a kind of social contract achieved. Elites and commoners both accept the part of the myth that does not appeal to them for the sake of the part that does. Elites are distinguished in a society that justifies inequality; commoners are best off in a society that compels service of elites for the whole. Instead of acting as warring parties, both sides work for the good of all. Such a compact is difficult to achieve. 

...

The part of the “noble lie” that once would have horrified the elites—the claim of common kinship—is irrelevant; instead, they resist the inegalitarian part of the myth that would then, as now, have seemed self-evident to the elites as well as the underclass. Today’s underclass is as likely to recognize its unequal position as Plato’s. It is elites that seem most prone to the condition of “false consciousness.”

....

While elites may suffer self-inflicted blindness to the nature of their position, the rest of society clearly sees what they are doing...Our ruling class is more blinkered than that of the ancien régime. Unlike the aristocrats of old, they insist that there are only egalitarians at their exclusive institutions. They loudly proclaim their virtue and redouble their commitment to diversity and inclusion. They cast bigoted rednecks as the great impediment to perfect ­equality—not the elite institutions from which they benefit. The institutions responsible for winnowing the social and economic winners from the losers are largely immune from questioning, and busy themselves with extensive public displays of their unceasing commitment to equality. Meritocratic ideology disguises the ruling class’s own role in perpetuating inequality from itself, and even fosters a broader social ecology in which those who are not among the ruling class suffer an array of social and economic pathologies that are increasingly the defining feature of ­America’s underclass. Facing up to reality would require hard questions about the agenda underlying commitments to “diversity and inclusion.” Our ­stated commitment to “critical thinking” demands no less, but such questions are likely to be put down—at times violently—on contemporary campuses.

....

From the vantage of nearly 2,500 years, Plato’s noble lie doesn’t appear to be a falsehood after all. For a society to function, two seemingly contradictory beliefs must be simultaneously held: We are radically different and radically alike. We are extensively differentiated yet bound together. We are called to sometimes radically unequal tasks, but those tasks are part of an effort to benefit the whole. Plato thought the “fact of difference” would be easy for people to acknowledge, since it is so evident to our senses, if not always easy for those in a position of lower status to accept. The challenge was how to achieve belief in a common origin and shared kinship. TheRepublic of Plato was one effort to answer that challenge, if a fairly absurd and implausible one (as Socrates readily admitted). 

....

So long as liberalism was not fully itself—so long as liberalism was corrected and even governed by Christianity—a working social contract was possible. For Christianity, difference is ordered toward unity. For liberalism, unity is valued insofar as it promotes difference.....

The new aristocrats believe we have transcended the need for Christianity, which they regard as a myth no less mendacious than Plato’s noble lie. They believe that by dispelling the old myths, they can become the vanguard of an ever more equal society. They blind themselves to the fact that this claim is a form of status maintenance, allowing denial of a deeper commonality with those they regard as benighted and backward. Elites denounce the “populists” while denying that they have fomented a class war. They deplore the obnoxiousness of Donald Trump, perfectly obtuse of their complicity in his ascent.

We are in uncharted territory. Liberalism coexisted with Christianity for its entire history, with Christianity moderating the harder edges of the regnant political philosophy, supporting forms and practices that demanded from elites the recognition of their elevated status, and hence, corresponding responsibilities and duties to those less fortunate. The thoroughgoing disdain and dismissiveness of today’s elites toward the working class is a reflection of our newfound “enlightenment,” just as is the belief among the lower class that only a strong and equally disdainful leader can constrain the elites. Liberalism has achieved its goal of emptying the public square of the old gods, leaving it a harsh space of contestation among unequals who no longer see any commonality. Whether that square can be filled again with newly rendered stories of old telling us of a common origin and destination, or whether it must simply be dominated by whoever proves the strongest, is the test of our age.--Patrick Deneen, "The Ignoble Lie" First Things.

I recently read Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed, and wanted to do a short piece on his claim in that book that liberalism today is in the grip of a noble lie that is serving the interests of elites at the expense of the have-nots; in Deneen's version the elites are deluded while the have nots see clearly. But I had left my copy at the office and instead found a version of his argument at First Things online. While the diagnosis is roughly the same between the book and the blog post, it is worth noting that in the book Deneen reads as an echt-Burkean -- distinct from the pseudo-conservatives who peddle national greatness and global markets --, who advocates a kind of withdrawal from politics in favor of small scale communal living (there are a lot of fond references to the Amish and even counterculture experimentation) while in the blog post he read as an angry Thomist who would, it seems, like to see the return of Christianity to its place of domination in the public sphere. I don't mean to suggest the two sides must be in contradiction with each other, or that Deneen is speaking in split tongues, but the distinct rhetoric is striking. (Here's another one: in the book the present-to-be-lamented-emphasis on diversity is traced back to Madison; in the blog Madison is dropped, and diversity is treated as a modern evil located in silly campus activists.) I also do not mean to imply that the historical Burke would reject national greatness and global markets!

But for my present purposes the differences between blog-Deneen and book-Deneen are irrelevant. For his account of the noble lie is fairly consistent between the two. I agree with Deneen one can encounter in elite social circles, rich folk in the grip of purported self-justifying meritocracy and victim blaming. (It is a bit peculiar that in the blog, but not the book, he seems to extol Charles Murray whose whole business-model turns on this.) But that fact is not to be confused with liberal self-understanding.

In particular, he seems to miss entirely -- and I think this is a great irony -- that his diagnosis of the modern noble lie echoes John Stuart Mill's in the introductory chapter 1 On Liberty. There Mill had argued (recall) that in conditions of domination/subordination, ruling ideologies will tend to favor the self-interest of the ruling classes. In so doing they corrupt the moral sentiments of the ruling class and even pervert how they treat each other. Deneen and Mill agree about this. In addition, Deneen and Mill agree that the lower classes see through the delusion. The one key difference is that Mill seems to suggest that the lower classes are, despite their knowledge, corrupted by becoming servile. Whereas Deneen suggests they turn to socialists and authoritarians. 

That is to say, and Deneen is oblivious to this, liberalism is quite capable of a truthful self-understanding of its own condition as an ideology that accommodates ruler-ship, while simultaneously recognizing that it needs to be committed to ameliorating the conditions that give rise to its rule while simultaneously reinforcing it. In my view this idea is also fully present in Adam Smith, who thought (recall) that property rights protect the rich from the indignation of the poor but that such a system would also benefit the poor. And while this does no justice to Rawls' arguments it is a pretty vulgar, but no less true, interpretation of the difference principle. In fact, once one pays attention to this feature of liberalism it is quite entrenched in the tradition.* 

So,  the more interesting fact is that for all his animus toward liberalism, Deneen can't see that the roots of his very critique is itself grounded in some of the best features of the liberal tradition. That is, the very terms by which Deneen proposes his criticism of liberalism is part of a historical dialectic generated by liberalism, and fully anticipated by the thinking branch of liberalism. In fact, in the book his solutions echo the Smithian strains in Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. What I am hinting at is that liberalism's understanding of progress also foresees the kind of reactions Deneen exhibits. 

What to make of this is a harder question. As regular readers know I am not complacent about the future of liberalism. And once I return to the office, I want to use the more perceptive elements of Deneen's diagnosis of liberalism to help articulate our challenge today. But here I close with a kind of puzzle and a further thought: it is a notable fact that some of the most strident and most intelligent enemies of liberalism since, say, Carl Schmitt (recall) have a tendency to treat it as rank stupidity. This is a shame because liberals and even the most skeptically liberal educators have always recognized that we need our critics. Which is the true reason -- and not some deference to Christianity -- our cannon (from Plato to Nietzsche) is, well, so illiberal.

Meritocracy and the Crisis of Liberalism

Your point about populism being primarily anti-meritocracy rings true, but raises a problem I can’t my head around: however much resentment (etc.) is felt by those who see themselves as not part of the meritocracy, it seems that in matters of immediate personal concern, they DEMAND meritocracy: they won’t stand for second-rate medicine, bridge-designing, supermarket-stocking, road paving, telephone service, . . .  . . And we are now (I hope) beginning to see very clearly  that if you shun expertise in advisors in government, you end up doing truly stupid things!  It does seem that Trump, for example, doesn’t worry about surrounding himself with expert economists, diplomats, military strategists,  . . . . etc., but still yearns for expert legal advice (which he isn’t getting much of) and expert polling, . . .  --Daniel Dennett (personal correspondence, June 27, 2018), [Quoted with permission.]

Dennett's note is a response to my  recent post on the crisis of liberalism (recall). In the body of the post I did not mention populism. The link between the rise of populism and meritocracy was made by Steve Davies in a comment on the the post; I concurred in response. (My colleagues in comparative political science are debating the relationship between the effects of globalization, educational attainment, economics success/class and populist politics so I do not mean to suggest this is self-evidently true.)

I had made a different claim. I had claimed that all kinds of intermediary social orders  -- e.g., military, law, health, education, research, clergy, trade-unions, press, etc. --, often associated with professions and skilled virtues or with social goals that are in some sense  self-justifying or whose primary purpose often predates the state or commercial society had been transformed by (what I call) 'financialization,' under the guise of meritocracy. That this happened suggests, first, that pre-existing hierarchy and status within such orders must have come to be felt unearned and/or inadequately justified and, second, that these social orders lacked the self-confidence in the justification of their primary mission to resist encroachment (about this some other time). 

The transformation of these intermediary social orders has had an unintended effect: namely that a derivative social function or indirect public good these social orders can provide has disappeared. This public good can be described in many different ways in part because none of them is wholly satisfactory: but these social orders are sites of practical rationality, of dispersed power, of (ahh) social capital, of pursuits of a fundamental ends (health, safety, spiritual belonging, justice, knowledge, etc.), and also a natural source of pluralism in society. In addition to the opinions of individual citizens, it's these social orders that help stabilize, even buffer a liberal society. My thought here is indebted to Adam Smith,* although the idea is associated with Burke; but unlike Burke I do so with less fondness for small platoons and (thanks to Jacob Levy's work [recall]) with due alertness to the local tyrannies the busybodies of these social orders can generate. 

A key point here is that the intrinsic missions of these great social intermediaries is multi-dimensional in what I call (with a nod to Dennett's work) 'value space.' Some of their primary ends cohere naturally with each other, some are sometimes in tension and sometimes complementary. Others are often contradictory. The point is that these ends belong to different fundamental features of human existence which can be incommensurable (but need not be so); it's the multi-dimensionality of value space that makes these social intermediaries natural bulwarks of social pluralism (even if the agents and institutions within each are not so). Financialization threatens the dimensionality of value space.

By 'financialization' I refer, in short-hand, to a number of related, and self-sustaining phenomena: the introduction of new public management, the acceptance of financial leverage as a key 'management tool,' and (facilitated by SAP) the embrace of financial indicators (including profit goals and high salaries for those that climb the ladder) as key guides in the mission of the order. (Often this is treated as the effects of neo-liberalism.) The crucial point is that the joint embraces of financialization flattens the dimensionality of the value-space in  society and makes comparison along a modest number of dimensions possible (and so reduces pluralism).

Financialization also flattens how we think about merit: to simplify, contribution to the (financial) bottom line or earned income become proxies for merit. These would converge if their is an efficient market in professional labor; but government regulation and professional qualifications tend to prevent such an efficient market in the professions. The problem is that financial merit and intrinsic professional quality need not coincide.

Now, I can turn back to Dennett's query. If I ask one of my wife's medical friends -- she is a surgeon -- for the best doctor to treat a friend's condition, I am not asking for the highest paid doctor. In fact, I would be somewhat taken aback and become mistrustful if one of them recommends a physician in virtue of the fact that they were the best paid physician. (Such a financial proxy is meaningless, in fact, when we compare physicians among different countries with different health care systems.) If in addition to his/her degree, the physician had a statement of a private banker hanging on the wall or, more likely (and not infrequently), an air of moral superiority over the patient, this would also be reason for concern about their quality as (say) a caring physician. (I did once get treated by a physician who bragged to my wife how efficiently he saw patients; it did not endear him to me.)

The previous paragraph already makes clear that one can want the best expert for one's needs while being cautious about the system of meritocracy that's developing around us in our society. And I think that's sufficient to answer Dennett's general question. I happen to think people need not be fully coherent in their aims, desires, and judgments (as long as they avoid placing bets with Bayesians). In complex societies like ours I actually think this makes us more responsive, adaptable, and happier, but nothing I say turns on that. But I do want to make one more pertinent point about Dennett's comment.

Social hierarchies are unpleasant and insufferable in different ways. In a social hierarchy that (increasingly) focuses rather narrowly on money and, in turn, treats the hierarchy as merited (both in the sense as being justified and fair as well as also in  the sense of tracking personal quality of the contributions to society) -- so with a low dimensional value space --, it increasingly becomes natural to speak of those on top of the hierarchy as winners and those on the lower rungs as (justified) losers (even the social science literature does this). (This despite the fact that even in perfectly competitive markets -- and few of ours approximate that -- luck plays, as Knight, Keynes and Hayek agreed --  an intrinsic role in outcomes.) In a properly functioning liberal society, by contrast, the value space is multi-dimensional and there are complex ways in which different elements  of the hierarchies interact.

To go through life being thought and internalizing the idea that one is a loser is grounds for (justified, I think, recall this post) resentment. In such circumstances one can still want the best for oneself and rail against the system, perhaps, even wish for its downfall. 

 

On Being Political Qua Philosopher

Factions subvert government, render laws impotent, and beget the fiercest animosities among men of the same nation, who ought to give mutual assistance and protection to each other.--David Hume.*

Unlike Hume (and like Schattschneider (recall)--a name I never encountered in professional philosophy, although he is significant in the history of political science--), I think political parties are important to the proper functioning of liberal democracy.  They do so because they can  help cultivate political talent and organize the energies, aspirations, and interest of many in the services of -- to echo and adapt Burke (recall) -- minimal national unity and some fundamental values or ideology. That is, and again, Burke noticed this first, it seems, in the long arc since the 18th century, political parties have been a  means, in part, to make philosophy worldly. On the Burkean view politicians are, in a non-trivial sense, applied philosophers or figureheads for (more hidden) applied philosophers.

As a non-trivial aside, of course, political parties can be mere vehicles for the pursuit of power and lack interest in minimal national unity and be ideology-free. That's compatible with them offering the public entertainment. Arguably, we have been turning that ever-present, ugly corner (recall my post on Justin Smith.)

Yet, while I recognize the way in which party politics and politicians can be philosophical, last week, I wrote that I happen to think (but have never argued) that attachment to party and candidate corrupts philosophers in pretty much the way Hume feared (fiercest animosities etc.). In context I offered some examples of such corruption (that is, it raises the probability of selective treatment of evidence, logical fallacies, inhumane conduct, etc.). Such corruption is nearly impossible to avoid because of the existence of partisanship (people like their side to win), rapid echo-chambers, group polarization, and self-deception. In particular, in politics, the pursuit of truth and humanity will inevitably be made instrumental to, and be sacrificed to, other ends. Politics is (as Plato, Madison, and Arendt emphasized) the realm of opinion, not truth--in part, because the mechanisms of discovery and truth-saying are lacking (recall here, and here). (That's not an encouragement to lie.)  In fact, (adhering to one's principles with) strict consistency -- a non-trivial commitment of most philosophers --is not just often a hindrance in politics, but (as one may say in the spirit of Isaiah Berlin) can easily lead to the worst tyrannies.

The whole previous paragraph is written with great deal of respect for and recognition of the importance of politics, even the very flawed politics of our times--I am all for participation in it. But my view is that philosophers should stay clear of adhering to parties (and think tanks allied strictly to them) and politicians because it is (nearly) impossible to maintain one's philosophical integrity. Recall, philosophical integrity is the way(s) in which one's professional arguments, professional credit, and public utterances and comportment cohere (recall, and here). Obviously, if one rejects such integrity, one also rejects my position.

Now it does not follow that I thereby embrace for myself or others (i) a Weberian neutrality model as the only legitimate one for philosophers.** I think such neutrality is legitimate, although, in practice, it tends to be rather awkward and it incorporates (often tacitly) considerable status quo bias. It does so because it tends to be quiet about ends, which it, in principle, leaves for others, and the means it becomes expert on and is willing to offer informed views about to others are nearly always given means. [Of course, this stance is not inevitably status quo biased.] Often such neutrality is a mere disguise for (non transparently) assumed values or values that, surprisingly enough, advance the interests of the expert all too well. (Much of my scholarship explores the complications in the vicinity.)

Yet, despite the previous paragraph, I do not (ii) endorse quietism; quietism can slide a bit too easily into complicity in the moral horrors of our age. Even so I can respect it in more principled others, especially when it is accompanied by a kind of do-no-harm principle. Moreover, I can't simply reject it because one of the great purposes of politics is to make the life of philosophy, the arts, and all the other joyful activities that ennoble our existence possible.

So, that leaves room for (iii) philosophical service on behalf of a cause or a group. The term (service) is indebted to Dotson (recall). The service ideal can encourage philosophical integrity. For example,*** if one's philosophy shows that the death penalty is immoral or the basic income moral, one can dedicate one's political life to advocating such a principle and make one's all things considered views and one's public utterances cohere. Of course, such coherence may well result in a certain, intolerant fierceness. It's all too familiar that ine may become quite zealous in one's advocacy.

That's okay, for the advocate of a principle or cause -- unlike the politician -- need not (in the intellectual and professional division of labor) balance and navigate competing priorities and interests, including national union or survival. That is the philosophical advocate is, if she is self-aware (know thyself and all that), cognizant of her limitations. For, such a unity worth having is constituted by and a product of the art of leadership that promotes practices, narratives, and public understandings that facilitate some dispositions conducive to minimal, political union. For too long humane political theorists and philosophers have neglected the significance of such political leadership--and ceded talk of leadership to (conservative) lovers of authority (or worse, neo-fascists) and to business consultants. It is an open question if an engaged philosophy can be practiced that promotes such an art and what form it would take.

On Top of the World

While I was thus dividing my thoughts, now turning my attention to some terrestrial object that lay before me, now raising my soul, as I had done my body, to higher planes, it occurred to me to look into my copy of St. Augustine's Confessions, a gift that I owe to your love, and that I always have about me, in memory of both the author and the giver. I [Page 317] opened the compact little volume, small indeed in size, but of infinite charm, with the intention of reading whatever came to hand, for I could happen upon nothing that would be otherwise than edifying and devout. Now it chanced that the tenth book presented itself. My brother, waiting to hear something of St. Augustine's from my lips, stood attentively by. I call him, and God too, to witness that where I first fixed my eyes it was written: "And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not." I was abashed, and, asking my brother (who was anxious to hear more), not to annoy me, I closed the book, angry with myself that I should still be admiring earthly things who might long ago have learned from even the pagan philosophers that nothing is wonderful but the soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself. Then, in truth, I was satisfied that I had seen enough of the mountain...--Petrarca (1336).

There is a wide difference between admiration and love. The sublime, which is the cause of the former, always dwells on great objects, and terrible--Burke.

Today's post is an act of escapism after spending a morning serving on a committee that allocates grant money to scientists that have perfected the art of sincere over-promising and diligent accumulation  of strategic publication records; I picked up Cassirer and Kristeller's The Renaissance Philosophy of Man.

I used to associate Mt. Ventoux with the ritualized memorial of the death of Tom Simpson and, more favorably, the awe-inspiring time trial win by Jean-François Bernard in 1987 to be followed by disastrous team-tactics toward Villard-de-Lans. But now I can set those alonside Petrarca's account of his climb* of the mountain which, according to Wikipedia is 1,912 m (6,273 ft). (I read it in Nachod's translation in the Kristeller/Randall volume, but link to another one.) The logician, Buridian, is said to have gotten there first, but Petrarca's account is worth reading if only because of his astute comments about the trickiness of selecting travel companions.

The passage quoted above is near the end of Petrarca's description of his thoughts once he reached the top of the mountain together with his brother and two servants. In fact, the reported thought occurs at the start of sun-set. I am not the first to note that Petrarca, who describes his conflicted will alongside his narrative of the day-long journey up the mountain, echoes the conversion moment in Augustine's Confessions, where, carried along by the chanting kid's voice, which he decides to interpret as a command from God, Augustine picks up Scripture and is inspired to convert to Christianity by Romans 13:13-4, which induces a serenity of heart without doubt [quasi luce securitatis infusa cordi meo omnes dubitationis tenebrae diffugerunt].

Petrarca quotes a passage from the Confessions in which a post-conversion Augustine describes people's hankering after the sublime while lacking self-knowledge.** It is tempting to say that Petrarca treats Augustine as teaching him the significance of the spiritual life.

That's not all false, of course, but it is worth noting that in Petrarca this spiritual journey is re-interpreted as a call to a philosophical life. I don't just claim this just because of the emphasis on self-knowledge. Rather, I recognized (recall this post) Petrarca's quote from Seneca's eight letter (one of those "pagan philosophers"), nothing except the soul is worthy of wonder; for the soul, if it be great, naught is great, which characterizes the greatness of soul of the self-sufficient, even sublime mind--one that attains immortality by skilled emendation or posthumous fame.

The physical, strenuous exercise of the climb prepares the body for a turn to philosophy, that is, the transformation of a weak, unstable mind into one that can face even death with equanimity. That the turn to philosophy is treated as a transformative, Pauline experience in the manner of our very own L.A. Paul is, of course, no surprise as such. But precisely at that transformative moment Petrarca is not just unable to talk with his pious brother (who had been extolled as the perfect climbing companion),*** but his brother's need is a source of possible irritation. Petrarca's account is so beautiful that one might miss the ugliness of the moment in which fellow-feeling is not permitted.

I do not wish to rule out ways that are philosophical yet permit exquisite co-affectivity rather than a withdrawal from human need, that is, philosophical escapism. But not for the first time I am struck by how alluring philosophical escapism can be felt from within and how discordant it can be seen to be from without; Petrarca's poetic-philosophical-confessional shows that mountaineers can indeed see farther.